Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	day_n	light_n	rule_v	3,304	5	10.4231	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52293	A conference with a theist part I / by William Nicholls.	Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.	1698 (1698)	Wing N1093; ESTC R25508	121,669	301

the Stars and all the innumerable furniture of those infinite spaces were made only to spangle round this little speck of ours He begins with a in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth as if the Heaven bore any proportion to this little poor Earthy Atom And again God made two great Lights c. he made the Stars also bringing in those innumerable prodigious Bodies with a poor also which are millions of times bigger than all the rest of the Creation No Sir I have much more august conceptions of the Deity than to think he made such numerous and glorious Productions to dance attendance to such a puny point For I look upon God to be a Being of infinite Power and Goodness especially as well as Duration and therefore I cannot suppose he should lie snug within his own happiness from all Eternity and never display a vein of his good nature and communicative kindness till within a few thousand years last past That Men should have such abject and narrow-spirited thoughts of so diffusive a goodness raises in me such a transport of Passion or Zeal or what you please to call it that the names of Atheistical Heretical Papistical and a hundred others which your Folks are scar'd at don't seem to me half so impious and reflecting upon the Deity as this one Heterodoxy Cred. Answer to the Argument from the late Communication of the Divine Goodness I am glad to find you have this concern for God-Almighty's honour as to appear thus Zealous for it But you should not be too outragious at the Sacred Prophet for a matter it is hard to prove him guilty of For I look upon this his History of the Creation to be the most noble piece of Philosophy which ever the World was acquainted with and whenever there appear any blemishes in it it is only the sully it has contracted from bad Interpreters I confess the generality of Divines both Ancient and Modern have thought the whole Universe was created in the Hexaemeron because God is said to have then created the Heaven and the Earth and because the Stars are mentioned in the fourth days work This Opinion has given indeed mighty advantage to Atheistical Men especially those who had any tast of Philosophy and had considered what a little pittance of the Universe this Earth of ours was for the sake of which all things seem'd by this account to be framed at the same time nay this point is supposed to have busied the Deity more than all the rest Now I shall take off the force of this prejudice when I shall have proved that Moses does not assert the Stars to be any part of the Adamical Creation but that in all probability that Creation was not extended beyond the Sun and the Planets The fixed Stars probably no part of the Mosaick Creation As for the first Verse in Genesis where God is said to have created the Heaven and the Earth it is plain that frequently in Scripture Language the word Heaven does not signify more than the Regions of the Air as when in the 20. v. of this Chapter the Fowls are said to fly in the Firmament of Heaven The Windows of Heaven Gen. 7.11 The Bottles of Heaven Job 38.37 i. e. the Clouds The hoary frost of Heaven Job 38.29 and in a hundred other places where Heaven can be extended no further than the Air. So that when God is said here to create the Heaven and the Earth we cannot from hence conclude that he then created every thing in the vast extramundane spaces though the vulgar do sometimes call all this by the name of Heaven But this is not the knot of the Difficulty the greatest stress of the Objection lies upon the 16 Verse where among other parts of the Creation God is positively said to have made the Stars And God made two great Lights the greater Light to rule the Day and the lesser Light to rule the Night he made the Stars also Gen. 3.16 explained Gen. 3.16 But the Text does not necessarily denote so much Our English Translation interpolates the words he made which are not in the original for the simple Translation of the Hebrew is only this And God made two great Lights the greater Light to rule the Day and the lesser Light to rule the Night and the Stars So that here the word Stars seems to come in so very abruptly and by the bye that one would be apt to think that it was clapt in by somebody else after Moses his time who had a mind to be mending his Hypothesis or else was added as a marginal note by some Rabbi and so at length crept into the Text as Father Simon has proved several others have done And there might be the more countenance for this when the Jews found themselves to have been so horribly plagued for worshipping the Host of Heaven for Gods when they were Creatures tho' at the same time they could not find any account of their Creation among the other parts of the Universe This might be to afford a Covert to such Idolaters who might from hence infer the Stars to be uncreated Beings which was fairly taken way by adding such a Gloss in the Margin or by taking it from thence into the Text where the Transcriber could not think it reasonable it should be omitted Now this is no very improbable account to any one who considers how much by head and shoulders and the Stars comes in if we take the common Interpretation of the words But I think we may give a better Interpretation of them and that is this The words and the Stars are not to be referred to the word made in the beginning of the Verse but to the word Rule which immediately goes before and are to be coupled not with the Sun and Moon but the night The lesser Light to rule the Night and the Stars Whereby is denoted the peculiar usefulness and predominancy of the Moon above all other Stars and Planets in this Earth of ours For this shines out when they do but twinkle and affords a mighty influence in the production and growth of all Vegetables So that upon this account she may very well be called the Ruler of the Night and as it were Prince among the Stars For as it appears to us it is a glorious Planet and a Princely Light and it is no absurdity in the divine Legislator as some will have it in the literal sense to call it a Great Light O. R. For the Admired Plato himself goes a pitch or two higher and calls these two Luminaries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Great Gods the Sun and the Moon Plat. Leg. Dial. 7. Now this notion of the words seems more rational because the Moon 's being Prince or Ruler among the Stars or Governess of the night is the common language of all people and what every old Author almost is full of Tully says she was called Diana because